Mountain Cabin DSL Saga, Part 2

So our story picks up after where we last left off in the DSL saga at the cabin. Residents in town were waiting for many months (a couple of years actually) for additional DSL capacity, since there are no other viable internet alternatives. Then last September, I was finally able to upgrade from 1.0 Mbps to 3.0 Mbps!

But when I last posted, I didn’t have any long term experience as to how the speed upgrade worked out. Since then, I noticed that my Speedstream 4100 modem would lose sync frequently. I thought that might have been due to EMF interference from the UPS being too close.

So I moved the UPS further away from the modem. Also, my ISP told me that the Speedstream 4100 was connecting only at ADSL1, so at the same time, I replaced it with a Dlink DSL-2320B, which can connect at ADSL2+. However, I didn’t have time to test any of these changes afterward. (And therefore, no time for the “after” photo.)

We were up at the cabin this weekend, and what stood out on the speed test of the Dlink DSL-2320B was the pitifully slow upload speed!

I found this thread showing I wasn’t the only one with slow upload speeds with this modem. And I also found this post about this modem being slow in general.

Then I switched out the Dlink modem out and replaced it with my old Speedstream 4100. I instantly got my advertised speeds!

So all was well with the Speedstream 4100 until it lost sync Saturday night. Sunday morning I also tried the DSL-2320B. Neither modem would sync.

Then, just for kicks, I unplugged the UPS from the wall and let the modem run off UPS battery power. The DSL-2320B instantly synced! I repeated this a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. Furthermore, it was also able to sync when plugged into the wall rather than the UPS. There was definitely a correlation between power source and modem sync for the DSL-2320B. Though when I tried those same tests for the Speedstream 4100, I couldn’t get it to sync with any of them.

I can’t think of anyone, but maybe Rick the handyman might know someone who would. I’d suggest just a VHF antenna which could get 7, 11, and 13, but no guarantees. Don’t bother with the UHF antenna, that’s even more of a crap shoot.